


The Crown of Love

by her_black_tights



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternative Universe - Immortality, Angst, Bellamy and Clarke have known each other for 2000 years but they still can't get their shit together, F/M, Light Fantasy, Tropes!!! All of them!!!!
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-16
Updated: 2018-05-06
Packaged: 2019-02-15 18:08:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 11,450
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13036596
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/her_black_tights/pseuds/her_black_tights
Summary: “Took you long enough,” Bellamy says, his voice bearing the weight of every single day of the past two thousand years that he’s been on this earth. Clarke winces at how cold his voice is, how it has none of the warmth, the familiarity that it had the last time they spoke.“I know, Bellamy. I’m so sorry that-“Before she can finish her sentence, she’s immediately silenced by something like fury flashing in his eyes.“Really, Clarke? We haven’t seen each other in over a hundred years and you think you can just say you’re sorry? After what happened? After everything that has happened ever since we met two thousand goddamn years ago?”





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So, I’ve been working on some iteration of this fic for the past year and am so excited to finally be happy enough with it that I can post the first chapter. The form is a lil more experimental than anything I’ve done before so I hope y’all don’t mind sticking with me as I try my hand at something new. This chapter is shorter than they will typically be and can be thought of kind of as an introduction. This fic is gonna cover all 2000 years that Bellamy and Clarke have been in and out of each other's lives, with historical bits interspersed with modern bits, so get ready for some flashbacks and so much pining!!!!! Comments and suggestions are definitely appreciated!! Ty for reading.

You would think that after being alive for over 2000 years and living in over 500 different places that, by this point, Clarke would be good at moving.

This assumption couldn’t be farther from the truth. Clarke has always been the most obnoxious type of transient, always leaving the most important tasks to the last minute. She has more belongings than any person should be allowed to have. On top of those two already terrible attributes, she has a knack for choosing to move on the hottest day of the year without knowing and always forgets at least one worthless but still very important object at her old place and stopped everything to go get it, even if it was at the most inopportune moment.

To be quite honest, she can’t fucking believe that Raven is helping her out this time. 

“For fuck’s sake, Clarke, how many antique hairbrushes do you have?” Raven groans from her spot on the hardwood floor of the apartment that they now live in together as of noon today. They have finally gotten all of Clarke’s belongings to what is already Raven’s apartment from the storage unit they had been kept in while Clarke has been abroad. She flushes as Raven brandishes a positively medieval contraption from 1300’s France that would always make her scalp bleed whenever she used it.

“I like keeping souvenirs,” she offers as an excuse before snatching the hairbrush out of Raven’s hand. She has grown oddly protective of her belongings from her past lives, especially the ones where memory was beginning to no longer hold onto the finer details. Every once in a while, the sun hits her face in particular way and her heart sings and she’s taken back to another place, another time, Rome in 1597 or Jerusalem in 392 but these moments are becoming few and far between as she careens into her second millennium of being alive. These souvenirs, though painfully silly and hopelessly impractical in moments such as these when they became burdens rather than memories, afford her the memories that her mind can no longer hold. 

Raven rolls her eyes but finds another hairbrush, this one from 1893, in a cardboard box marked “IMPORTANT! DO NOT THROW OUT,” and places it on Clarke’s nightstand. An uneasy silence stretches out between them and Clarke sucks in a breath because she knows what’s coming.

“So, are you gonna tell me why you really decided to move to DC or are we gonna keep pretending that you just so happened to find a job here?” Raven asks, an eyebrow raised and a sneaky smile on her lips. Clarke sighs, pulls a pair of shoes out from the bottom of a box before dropping them to the floor with an unceremonious thunk.

“I missed you.” 

“Is that really what you’re going with? Clarke, if you missed me, you could’ve visited, instead of getting a job where I live and asking if you could move into my apartment. I mean, I know I’m fucking awesome but, us being apart has never been that big of a deal before. How about you try again and tell me the real reason this time?”

Clarke frowns, casting her eyes downward. Raven always had a habit of asking the exact question that she was avoiding answering for herself. She pulls another pair of shoes out of the box, a pair of lace-up boots from 19th century London, and makes a show of adjusting the laces. Raven, like always, sees right through her and snatches the boots out of her hands so Clarke no longer has a distraction from her old friend’s line of questioning.

“That’s the real reason. I missed you and I got burnt out on doing Doctors without Borders all the time. I needed a change of pace. Besides, we haven’t lived together in a while,” she says. Raven is definitely not buying this explanation but she sighs, knowing that trying to get the truth out of Clarke is a hopeless battle that she does not have the energy to fight right now, after spending the whole day moving in the summer’s sticky heat. 

“Listen, you don’t have to tell me right now. I know you’ve probably been through some shit since the last time we saw each and that’s probably gonna take a while to process but I just want you to know that, when you’re ready to talk, I’m here for you.”

Raven puts a hand on her friend’s shoulder after she finishes speaking. Clarke nods and in that moment, she feels unspeakably thankful for Raven. She places her hand on the one that Raven has on her shoulder and forces a small smile but a smile nonetheless, a realer one than any that have passed across her lips in god knows how long. 

“Thank you, Raven. For everything.”

“Don’t thank me yet. You’re the one who has to live with me. And I know it’s been a hundred years since the last time we lived together but I still haven’t learned how to do dishes.”

Clarke laughs and her heart fills with warmth. Perhaps, this life won’t be so bad after all.

Even though, in this life, she still hasn’t seen Bellamy in almost one hundred years. 

*

She doesn’t like thinking about the last time she saw him.

Not about the way his lips twisted around her name or the desperation in his voice. She doesn’t like how he forced her to remember every moment that they had spent together and how he had been there for her, whenever she needed it the most.

She doesn’t like remembering how his lips felt against hers, how she knew it was their last kiss before it even started, how she knew there was no recovering from this and what they had done to each other. 

Most of all, she doesn’t like acknowledging the fact that after nineteen hundred years spent together, side by the side, companions and life partners in every sense of the word, everything between them is ruined and it’s all her fault. 

*

“Dr. Griffin, we need you in the emergency room to do rounds.”

The nurse’s voice cuts through Clarke’s reverie just at the most inopportune moment, the one where she just began to fixate upon what his face had looked like the first time they met. She rubs her eyes, trying to banish the image from her mind, before fixing the nurse, a lovely girl named Maya, with a forced smile. Already, she knows she is not exactly making the best impression at her new job. 

Usually, Clarke is able to lose herself in her work. Hell, that’s the whole reason she had decided to go to medical school again in the first place. The change of scenery to Cambridge, Massachusetts and Harvard Med had at first afforded her the opportunity to lose herself, forget all the people she had been throughout the past millenniums and pretend that she was just Clarke Griffin, native of Connecticut who did her undergraduate coursework at Oxford (an alma mater that would create enough distance between her and her classmates without arising suspicion) and was eager to learn. It was hard, like it always was, to feign ignorance when her male classmates attempted to explain elementary anatomical concepts to her like she wasn’t over two thousand years old and hadn’t been through this whole “learning how to be a doctor” song and dance at least five times by now. No matter the annoyances, she at first was able to forget her past, become committed to a new group of friends, focus in on her speciality (emergency medicine because she decided she really wanted a challenge this go around), and even have a few romantic trysts that fizzled into nothing as soon as they started. 

“Sorry, Nurse Vie. I’ll be there in a moment,” Clarke manages, after collecting herself. She rises to her feet and brushes the crumbs of her granola bar off of her chest. Not exactly her most dignified moment yet, but she has been at the hospital for over sixteen hours with no end in sight. Maya smiles good-naturedly, the cynicism in her eyes betraying she’s seen far worse than a crumb covered attending trying to make their way to the emergency room on no sleep. A quiet moment of understanding passes between the two women and, for a second, Clarke thinks this new job is one of the best ideas she’s had in a very long time.

That is, until she gets to the emergency room and sees Octavia fucking Blake for the first time in over a hundred years, standing in the middle of the emergency room with a very handsome, albeit very injured mortal man. 

*

What happens next, Clarke is not exactly proud of. While, when she first saw Octavia, she intended to face the interaction head on, that feeling quickly dissipated as soon as she realized that while seeing Octavia was not as bad as seeing Bellamy, she was at least certain that Bellamy would not punch her in the face upon first sight. 

And that is how she ended up hiding in the janitor’s closet. 

“God, you’re such a fucking idiot,” Clarke mumbles to herself, pacing in the closet with what limited space she has. She has bumped into the mop and the mop bucket at least five times since she entered the closet but she knows that this situation is far preferable to the one waiting for her in the emergency room. Before escaping to the closet, she had grabbed one of her fellow attendings and begged them to trade rounds with her and they, thankfully, obliged, perhaps sensing Clarke’s desperation as her fingers dug into their shoulder.

So, she’s bought herself some time. At least enough to wait out Octavia and hopefully enough to wrap her mind about what has happened. She pulls her phone out of the pocket of her scrubs and quickly dials Raven’s number. It’s 2am but Raven is usually up at this hour anyway, slaving away at one of her personal coding projects. 

She answers after the second ring.

“What’s up? Shouldn’t you be saving lives right now?”

“When were you going to tell me that Octavia lives in DC?”

Clarke hears Raven swear under her breath.

“I don’t know - when you told me why you decided to move here.”

Clarke groans, leaning against the damp wall of the janitor’s closet. The fumes from all the cleaning products messing with her head. “Raven, you’ve known me for over 600 years. I think you can figure out why I decided to move to DC,” she replies. Avoidance. Hiding. Running away from her problems so she never has a moment to actually process what has happened to her, what she has become. She lets herself slide down the wall until she’s sitting on the floor. She hears Raven let out a soft sound of sympathy and she so desperately wishes she was at home, with her friend, not in a fucking janitor’s closet and dealing with this bullshit all by herself. 

“You guys still haven’t made up?”

“I haven’t seen him since.”

“You haven’t seen him since 1923? What the fuck, Clarke? That’s almost a hundred years.” The disbelief in Raven’s voice causes Clarke’s heart to clench with the knowledge that she’s fucked up, bad this time. Fifty years may have been excusable but a hundred? There’s no way that can be forgiven.

Raven sighs and Clarke can hear her rubbing her temples. She wonders if Raven’s ashamed of her. Worse, she wonders if this confirms all the terrible thoughts that Raven must have had about her throughout these years, when she created the chasm between the two of them that now seems impossible to cross. 

“I’m sorry for saying that...I know that you two...it’s never as simple as it always seems to me, I guess.”

“It’s okay. I know it must be hard to be friends with someone who is an emotionless monster,” she manages, after a few painful moments, the self-loathing in her voice evident.

“...Clarke, don’t start that shit with me - it’s not true and you know it.” 

She sighs. Her throat’s thick with the effort of holding in the storm that’s been brewing inside her ever since she arrived in Washington DC. Clarke pulls her knees to her chest. 

“He lives here, doesn’t he?”

A beat. Then another. Clarke hears Raven shifting in her seat on the other line and her silence confirms what she has now realized is her worst nightmare.

“I’m sorry...I thought...I guess I just assumed that you knew. That him being here was the reason you wanted to move here. I didn’t know that you hadn’t spoken to him since the fucking early 1900’s,” Raven replies and there’s a thin veil over the annoyance, the frustration in her voice. Clarke tenses up. The last thing she needs right now is to get into a stupid fight with Raven but she feels it bristling inside her, the need to act out. She rises to her feet and begins pacing around the closet again, hitting the mop out of the way whenever it falls on her. 

“Are you trying to say something, Raven?”

“I don’t know, maybe I’m trying to say that if you talked to me about your feelings more than once every century, I would have known not to tell you to move here, okay?” 

While she wants to take offense to what Raven has said, to rail against it as false and hurtful, deep down, Clarke knows it’s the truth. She’s been a difficult person to know for the entirety of her existence and an even more difficult person to be friends with. Though her and Raven have been close for an inordinately expansive set of years, there have been many years of silence, of misunderstanding. The bridge between them had oftentimes been Bellamy, of all people. And now, without him in Clarke’s life, it is almost as though she is actively losing her ability to be companionable, to be anything other than a pillar of strength that can weather any storm, as long as it doesn’t involve talking about her emotions. 

Suddenly, the weight of all the experiences she’s been avoiding, of all the secrets she’s been hiding from herself, falls itself upon Clarke’s shoulders. She finds herself slipping to the ground once more, this time far less gracefully, and the silence between her and Raven becomes sticky and uncomfortable.

She takes a deep breath. Clarke knows she has two choices and neither of them are great. She can either continue this conversation with Raven, in this fucking janitor’s closet where she’s hiding from Bellamy’s sister, or she can hang up the phone, find somewhere else to sleep, and probably kiss the last real relationship in her life goodbye. 

“I’m sorry, Rae. I don’t blame you for thinking that. The reason I never told you about...what happened is because I’m ashamed. I’m ashamed and I’m pretty sure I ruined everything between him and I. And that’s my cross to bear. I’m realizing that now. But, I don’t want to ruin everything between the two of us just because I’m too prideful to admit that I probably should’ve let you know. And I apologize for that.” The words leave Clarke’s mouth in a stuttered, clumsy cadence but she manages it anyway. She notices her phone is sticky with tears and, belatedly, that she’s crying for the first time in what feels like ages. She lets out a soggy little laugh at the ridiculousness of this situation, crying, on the phone, with Raven, in a fucking janitor’s closet. 

Raven, thankfully, doesn’t leave her hanging for long. “You crying, Griffin?”

Another laugh. Clarke smiles through her tears, wipes them away with the sleeve of her scrubs. “Yeah, in a janitor’s closet. I hid in here when I saw Octavia,” she replies and she hears Raven laugh, loud and full, before speaking again.

“Are you serious?”

“Unfortunately.”

Warmth fills Clarke’s chest, radiating to the her fingertips. The weight she carries, that often feels impossibly burdensome, lightens a touch, and she finds herself smiling. 

“Listen, what time do you get off work?”

Clarke glances down at her watch. To her surprise, it’s already 3am, signifying the end of her shift. “I’m actually off now,” she replies, wiping the last of her tears from her face. 

“Okay, stay in your closet, I’ll be there in 10 minutes and I’ll sneak you out of there. Octavia will probably be too distracted by her boyfriend anyway.”

“You’re the best, Raven.”

“And don’t you ever forget it.” 

*

They don’t talk about everything. Not at first, anyway. Raven checks to make sure the coast is clear and then texts Clarke to meet her in the drop-off lane of the hospital. She extricates herself from the janitor’s closet, shuts the door quietly behind her and then takes off running for the exit. It all feels rather silly as soon as she gets to Raven’s car, throws the door open, and slides in like she’s in a low budget spy movie and the way Raven says “it’s go time,” as soon as Clarke clips her seatbelt on is enough to make her laugh at least half of the way home.

Raven insists on picking up drive-thru hamburgers and french fries on the way home. “It can’t kill us, stupid,” she retorts when Clarke says that they should pick a healthier choice and she cannot help but giggle in response before asking her old friend to order her two cartons of fries instead of one. 

When they reach their home, they set up on the floor of the living room. It’s 4am but neither of them particularly care. Clarke doesn’t have work until 6pm and Raven works from home a lot of the time. Once they both have poured their preferred amount of ketchup and hot sauce onto their plates, they settle into a comfortable silence.

Only after they both have finished their first order of fries and have started working on their second, does Raven ask her the question that Clarke has known is coming since their phone conversation ended. “So, do you want to talk about it now?”

She sighs. It’s a question she truly does not know the answer to. While she would like to think crying and emoting a couple of hours ago would have opened the floodgates to some deep and unfathomable truth about herself and the path her life has taken, no such insight sits on the tip of her tongue. She’s lost. The shock of knowing that Bellamy, the albatross she has been carrying about her neck for what feels like the entirety of her existence, is here, where she is, has not hit her in the way she’s expected. Instead of a sharp blow to the chest, like she expected, it feels like a compound fracture, splintering her body in the most quiet, most wide reaching of ways. She cannot put the exact words to it, only knowing that if she sees him in person, she may fall apart the moment their eyes meet. It’s an unholy sensation, one that makes her want to run.

And she cannot say that she hasn’t been thinking about it ever since she saw Octavia. Running. This life she has built here is no more permanent than any of the others she has had. She could go abroad again, perhaps to Germany where she bought a home in the 1980’s. Or, she could find one of the hideouts where she and Bellamy had hidden gold sometime during the 15th century and buy herself a remote island where no one from her old lives, not Raven, not Bellamy, not Octavia, not even Wells, would be able to find her. 

Or, she could learn to live some form of life here. In his shadow, in constant fear of running into him and seeing for herself the ire he holds for her and the hatred she rightly deserves. 

“I have his number, if you want it,” Raven offers, finally, her words startling Clarke out of her reverie. She shakes her head immediately.

“Why do you have his number?”

Raven laughs, almost cruelly but not quite. “Clarke…Bellamy’s my friend too.”

It’s hard to miss the innuendo in Raven’s words, hard to not let it pierce Clarke’s already tender heart. There were times when Raven and Bellamy had gone to bed together. It was often when Clarke wasn’t around or, more likely, when she was in one of her moods. Hell, there was even a handful of times when she and Raven had been lovers. Such things happened when time stretched out infinitely. She nods, schooling her expression to not betray the hurt she may feel (though, she can barely even admit it to herself). 

“No, I don’t think I want his number. I think…I think I’m just gonna pretend this didn’t happen. That I didn’t see Octavia. Pretend he isn’t here. And, if I see him one day, I’ll figure out what to do then. But, for now, I just want to focus on my job. And having a good time with you.”

Raven’s eyes widen a little at Clarke’s words and Clarke frowns at her friend’s incredulous expression. However, before she can say anything, ask Raven what’s bothering her, her thoughts are interrupted by Raven’s words: “fine, but, if you ever change your mind, you can ask me for it whenever you want.”

Clarke nods. And she promises herself that she will never ask Raven and she will try to never think about Bellamy Blake ever again. 

*

Truth be told, Clarke barely remembers what her life was like as a mortal, apart from the fact that it was painful. 

Painful in the way that was unique to mortals and the sorry plight of their kind: that death was inevitable and unpredictable. She knows she had a mother, a stern woman whose mouth was always in a firm line but had such kindness in her eyes, and a father whose best intentions led to his demise (and almost hers as well). Beyond that, the small details are always slipping away from her, even how she became immortal to begin with. 

If you ask Clarke today how she was blessed (or, alternatively, cursed) with her eternal life, she will say it had something to do with her mother’s desperation and the gods’ twisted of sense of humor. 

She had been sentenced to death (she remembers that much, at least). The crime was not hers but in many ways was, the way in which a parent’s guilt spreads to their children. Her father was a willful man from an ancient, now lost tribe originating in Gaul, who refused to bow down to the Roman Empire. Her mother had accidentally let it slip to a Roman soldier. Her father, along with all of the tribes leadership, was slaughtered. Clarke escaped the first round, hidden in the cellar by her mother, but when the soldiers came again, there was no reprieve. Despite being only 17 years of age, she was sentenced to die. 

Her mother was overcome with guilt, the type of guilt that drives the otherwise sane to do mad things. She was the tribe’s healer, the one closest to their magic. Using blood magic from a time forbidden and forgotten, she gave her own life so Clarke had a chance of surviving certain death. 

There is one clear memory Clarke has of this life, the one before everything. She remembers a Roman soldier holding an axe to her neck. He raised up his arms and brought it down. For a moment, her consciousness ebbed away and she considered that, perhaps, her mother’s magic didn’t work after all and this was her end. However, as quickly as she left her body, she came back, to the sound of the soldier screaming as her neck fused itself back together.

It was only five years later, when people in the village she was inhabiting tried to kill her for being a witch, that she realized her mother’s magic had been more successful than she had intended. 

Some days, Clarke hates what her life has become. She hates endless mornings, the type of purposelessness that comes from knowing there’s no end, no conclusions to any story. She’s tried to kill herself more times than she can count, only to wake up with her pulse still beating and her mind still racing because she still doesn’t know what’s the point of all this, staring down the barrel of another thousand years on this planet with no end in sight.

Other days, one hundred years ago, she remembers that she used to see a purpose in all of this. She used to feel like there was meaning. It was still intangible then, an ethereal cloud that she never felt as though she could capture in words or actions or thought.

But, deep down, she always thought it had something to do with Bellamy Blake and the way he made the world seem like something worth participating in.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi everyone! So so so sorry this has taken me like four and a half months to update - I've been super busy with work. However, I am so appreciated of all the comments that were left while I was gone and am so excited to finally share this chapter with you!!! Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments. ;-)

_117 AD, MACEDONIA_

After being alive for 100 years, Clarke is fairly confident that she has gotten the hang of this immortality thing.

She has at least learned the most important lessons: to never draw too much attention to yourself and to never stay in one place for too long. On her bad days, days when she gets an ache in her neck at the exact spot where the Roman soldier’s axe tore into her skin all those years ago, she cannot help but be angry, angry for how long it took her to figure this shit out and angry that this is the life she has been cursed to, one where she has to learn lessons that no human being should have to learn (how to hide the fact that nothing can kill you, how to hide the fact that you cannot age, how to learn not to care about the millions of mortals that surround you at all times who will die as soon as you get to know them).

They’re difficult lessons but she’s learned them all the same, with no teacher but her own mistakes and time. At this point, she’s forgotten so much of what she used to be. She knows the name she was given, Clarke, but she does not use it that often, preferring to choose a name that befits whatever land and culture she’s taken up residence in this time.

Here, in Macedonia, she is Clementina, resident of a small village at the edge of the capital, who claims to be the widow of a solider and who practices a small form of medicine to earn her keep. It’s a small life, an unobtrusive one and, to be quite honest, it’s rather boring. But, it’s better than running, better than fighting, better than being burnt at the stake only to rise from the ashes a couple hours later, skin raw and ashen. She takes each day as it comes, trying to find purpose in the smiles of those who she heals and who she helps. It’s not a lot, but it’s enough to get by for now.

But, there’s one thing that Clarke can’t deny, a startling truth that she never thought would be her own. She’s lonely, in an aching way, one that eats at her more and more everyday. The people she talks to every day when she picks up vegetables at the market, or the mothers who she pretends to commiserate with as she fixes their children’s broken bones, they don’t know her. They never could. To know her would be to know that Clarke is not Clementina, that she is not a simple girl from a village somewhere in the Macedonian countryside who will marry again, any day now (or at least that is what everyone near her seems to believe).

And, deep down, she knows that this a loneliness that can never fade because there cannot possible be another person like her, a cursed anomaly born out of a mother’s desperation. Or at least, that’s what she’s convinced herself.

Until one fateful afternoon where everything changes.

*

The day begins like any other. She rises in the morning to the sound of a nearby rooster crowing and then washes up, gets dressed, and goes out to collect eggs from her small hutch of chickens. After making the same breakfast she makes everyday with vegetables from the village’s market, she sits at her table and eats. For a moment, Clarke loses herself in the tedium of everyday life, how she’s been doing the same bullshit for over 100 years and probably will continue to do so infinitely, living a half-life on the edges of society and nothing more.

She’s shaken from her reverie by a cacophony of disjointed screams and the frenzied sounds of the villagers rushing to and then banging on her door. Clarke’s heart stutters in her chest. Mornings that start like this never seem to end well. For a moment, she considers not answering the door, hiding, and the stealing away in the night. Anything to not have to watch another mortal die.

She seems to be the port of last resort, the place the villagers bring their sick and dying when all other doctors and healers of all kinds have declared whoever a lost cause. She had save a dozen or so of their kind since she began residing in this village, a paltry amount compared to those who died on her kitchen table. However, those few good outcomes had led those around her to think of Clarke as some kind of miracle worker.

She knows she shouldn’t do this anymore. This is a position she has fallen into many times and, more often than not, it leads to the most irritating sort of trouble. But, Clarke can’t deny those who are desperate, who have no other options. So, after taking a deep breath and steeling herself, she opens the door.

And the villagers bring in her most hopeless case yet.

“Clementina, it’s so horrible, what has happened,” Clarke’s neighbor begins as her husband carries in a young man, no more than 25, with golden brown skin and curly dark hair. He’s been impaled by arrows, so many of them that Clarke cannot hide her sharp inhalation of breath as she takes in the dying, blood drenched person in front of her. Her neighbor, a kind woman who Clarke wishes she could actually think of as a friend, continues explaining. Apparently, she found this man at the outskirts of the village. He had been trying to walk into town, his steps sloppy and unsure, but had collapsed just as Clarke’s neighbor asked him what happened to him.

“He’s barely breathing - I thought you could help like you helped the others,” she continues, bringing up the last mortal Clarke was able to save a couple months ago. This is completely different, though. This man is on death’s door, there’s no doubt about it. Her neighbor’s husband lays him down on Clarke’s table but he’s already turning pale, already struggling to breath. She feels a familiar sense of dread fall over her as she prepares herself to watch another mortal die because she isn’t good enough, smart enough, able to endow others with the gift that she has been given.

“I will do everything I can but he’s lost a lot of blood,” she says, finally, and her neighbors nod, hurry out of her home and firmly shut the door.

And then, it’s just her and him. Or at least, what’s left of him. She watches his eyes roll back in his head, his mouth agape, and she shudders as she realizes just how close to death he is.

But, she’ll try. That’s the least she can do. The mortals do not seem to hold it against her that many of their kind do not leave her house alive. She knows that they must understand how fragile their lives are, how easily they can be snatched away.

After retrieving her instruments from her bedroom, she sets to at least making his death a less painful one. Carefully, she sets to removing each of the arrows. “You must have really pissed someone off,” she mutters and the man merely lets out a particularly loud groan in response. He’s getting blood all over everything, her table, her arms, her clothes. Once he’s gone, she’ll have to spend the whole day scrubbing.

Moving her hands quickly and confidently, she begins to wiggle one of the arrows, trying to remove it from his flesh. The man’s body quakes as she does it and she frowns, his pain hurting her. “I’m sorry, I’m trying to be careful,” she says and after a few more seconds, the first arrow is out. Clarke notices how deep some of them are and she cannot help but wonder how this man is still alive, still breathing. But, before she gets too hopeful, she catches herself. She knows that there’s only one way this is ending.

She begins to work methodically, her hands moving without thought. Perhaps, she has thought, the reason that she still tries to save mortals, after all this time, is because working in this way, at the thin membrane between life and death, reminds her of her mother. Or, the few memories she still has. Clarke frowns as she struggles to conjure her mother’s face from the murkiness of her past. Sometimes, it seems like the only concrete thing that she can remember is her mother’s hands and how they worked deftly when she was trying to heal someone. She tries to channel that same confidence into her own as she removes arrow after arrow. The man’s body has stopped quaking but he hasn’t returned to consciousness yet and she knows the end’s not far away.

“At least you won’t die full of arrows,” she manages, once she’s removed the last one. His torso is still a mess of blood and wounds. If she had more tools, more training, she might have tried to do something about that but she knows that’s a fool’s errand.

She gets up, moves to wash her hands. They’re soaked in blood and it takes her a few minutes to scrub them completely clean. Clarke loses herself in the act, until her hands are raw and stinging but clean.

It’s only then that she realizes that the man’s breathing hasn’t stopped yet. Her back is still to him but she can hear what almost sounds like the normal inhale-exhale of a healthy mortal, not one that was on the edge of death a few seconds ago.

Her neck itches with the unmistakable feeling of someone watching her.

She turns around, not believing it, not truly, until she sees the dying man from before, sitting up, no longer full of gaping wounds, and very much alive.

“I guess I owe you a ‘thank you-“ is the last thing she hears before she passes out from shock.

*

When she comes to, the man is standing over her. He has the oddest look on his face, one that seems familiar but also not. She starts to sit up, her head swimming and her body aching with the effort. The man reaches down, helping her up and then situating her on a chair.   
“Sorry about that. I didn’t mean to scare you,” he says. His voice is low, gravelly. It stirs something in Clarke that she cannot place.  
“You should be dead,” she manages, after pausing for a few moments to catch her breath and reorient herself to what’s going on. Her mind is moving at lightning speed to make sense of the man in front of her - for so long she has thought of herself as the only one - a cursed abomination that will wander the world alone. But this man, and the fact that he is no longer bleeding and rapidly healing (she can even see his skin knitting itself back together - like hers does), changes everything.

“Well, that’s a testament to your amazing healing abilities. Now, if you don’t mind, I will be going now,” he says, so matter-of-fact that it kind makes her want to punch him, just to get that smug, self-satisfied grin off his face. He really seems to think that he can get one over on her. She wonders how many mortals he’s tricked in this way, how many times he has played this game. She frowns, rising from her seat, but immediately feels woozy again and he throws out his arm to help catch her and ease her back down.

“Easy, easy - you were out for a while,” he instructs and she wants so badly to roll her eyes at him but the action would make her deliriously dizzy. Clarke glares at him, trying to figure out why exactly this stranger seems to have such a talent for getting under her skin.

“You should be dead.”

“You’ve already said that - and, like I said before, I’m still alive because of you. Thanks again, really.”

He moves for the door and in a moment of foolish desperation, she, clumsily, rises up from her chair and grabs hold of his arm. The man gasps at her touch and looks back at her, eyes narrowed and cold.

“Listen, if you know what’s good for you, you’ll drop it. Hell, if you were really smart, you would forget I was ever here.”

His tone is harsh, threatening. She can feel the edges of it sink into her skin. He places his hand on hers and rips her hold from his body. She wonders if he will try to kill her. He looks like he wants to, at least, the cold determination of those who have nothing left to lose written all over his features. The secret that they share is one that must be kept at all costs. His body betrays his frustration as he clenches his fist, his eyes focused completely on her. She wonders if he will faint - after he believe he’s killed her but she rises up defiant.

Her distrust of him is overpowered by her loneliness. This is something she thought she would never have again - kinship. So, in what feels like a spell of madness, she reaches for a knife and - as his eyes widen and he prepares to defend himself - brings it across her wrist in a way that would surely be life-threatening if she had a life that could be threatened. Blood gushes from the wound and she holds it up, so he can watch, as her skin gapes and then, suddenly, knits back together.

“I’m like you,” she says and his formerly defensive expression falters as he struggles to make sense of what’s happening. She starts to feel a bit light-headed again and he, immediately sensing it, reaches out to catch her once more, his arms strong and secure around her body.

“I thought....” he trails off, looking into her eyes and she knows exactly what he’s feeling. It’s the same emotion she had experienced when she had woken from her fainting spell.  
“Me too.”

They stand there for a moment, absorbing what this means. It’s only then that she realizes how close they are to each other, his arms still steadying her, and she flushes. It’s the closest she’s let herself be to another person in almost 100 years. She has spent so long running, keeping herself isolated, never letting anyone in because she knows that they don’t understand - that they can’t - but here is this man, this complete surprise, brought into her life by happenstance and her neighbor’s kindness. She takes a step away from him, the feeling of his hands on her already seared into her skin. The touch of a person - she had forgot what it felt like - how it could make you feel human.

“You’re lucky they brought you to my house,” she says, her voice soft and uncertain. While this is something that she’s wanted for so long, she does not know exactly what to say to him. Though they share the same burden, she does not feel the instantaneous connection that she expected she would feel if she ever met someone else like her. There’s something rough about this man, something unpredictable. She wonders how ready he was to kill her. She wonders how many mortals he has killed to keep his secret from getting out. Her body stiffens at the thought and she squares up, no longer soft and dizzy.

“I would’ve figured it out if they didn’t. I always do. Mortals aren’t particularly difficult to trick, as I’m sure you’ve realized by now,” he replies and a self-satisfied smirk finds its way across his face.

Clarke’s eyes narrow. “They’re not stupid. They’re pretty good at figuring when someone doesn’t die when they should. You were being reckless, coming here. Next time you might not be so lucky.”

He snorts, dismissive and rude. “Well, there’s usually a way to solve that problem. Or, are you too spineless?”

She bristles. She’s only known this man for an hour but he has already prodded her where she’s most sensitive and from the triumphant expression on his face, he seems to know it too. “Or, maybe I’ve realized that killing mortals merely because they get in my way is a terrible way to live,” she replies, her voice sharp and accusatory. He stiffens and it’s clear she’s hit a nerve, that perhaps he thought she had missed the threat in his voice when she had tried to keep him from leaving her home.

“Whatever I am, it’s better than what you are. Living in a village, hiding who you are - there’s nothing admirable about cowardice.”

“There’s nothing admirable about cruelty either.”

A tense silence falls over the room. Whatever companionship they may have felt toward each other a few moments ago, it’s gone now. She frowns, turning away from him. His words, while intentionally inflammatory, have reminded her of a truth she has hidden from herself for so long, she had forgotten its name. She knows this is not the life she wants, one living on the edges of society. But, it’s the only one that has kept her and all the mortals around her safe. She hears the man moving for the door and she does not even think of asking him to stay. He has done enough damage.

“I may be cruel - but at least I am living a life that’s worth living. By the next time we meet, you will have realized that. I’m sure of it.”

She turns to face him just as he begins to open the door. “Who says there’s going to be a next time?” she spits, fury and hurt written all over her face.

He merely smiles in response.

The door slams shut behind him and he disappears from her life as quickly as he arrived. It’ll be another two hundred years before she learns that his name is Bellamy and that he is right, that there will be a next time and a time after that and a time after that, until she ruins everything.

*

The man, his words, they sink into her bones. She attempts to go about her business in the months following, trying to remember what aspects of this life she used to find pleasurable, but whenever she thinks she’s forgotten, that his words do not matter, she feels their hot fury burning underneath her skin. Begging her to move. Begging her to change. Begging her to live.

She draws deeper inside herself. No longer exchanges pleasantries with her neighbors in the morning, no longer going to the market no more than necessary, no longer offering her services to every desperate mortal that darkens her doorstep. She still helps some, the truly hopeless cases, but it’s out of a sense of guilt rather than a sense of duty. No longer does she feel as though she owes something to these people. They are the ones who are forcing her to live like this, in secrecy, in fear, afraid of turning into a monster like that man from so many years ago but also afraid of not living a life worth continuing on infinitely.

It’s a difficult space to be in.

So difficult that one day it becomes too much.

It turns out, her life in the village is easier to leave than she thought. There isn’t much to it, no real relationships, no one who would care about her absence. Her coldness of the past few months certainly makes sure of that. She packs up the few belongings she’s allowed herself to accumulate, slips them in a bag, and puts on her most practical pair of shoes. And, just as mysteriously as she arrived 5 years ago, she disappears, never to be seen or heard of by any of the villagers ever again. And, eventually, after the initial shock and confusion, they forget that she was ever there at all.

_2020 AD, WASHINGTON DC_

“Should I be worried about you?”

There’s a humorous tilt to Raven’s words but there’s still real concern, genuine and unwavering, underneath them. Clarke’s doing her makeup for the first time in what feels like forever, after living a life that solely consisted of going to work, staying there until she almost passes out, and then spending the rest of her time sleeping for the past couple months. It’s not an unfamiliar pattern, if anything, it’s the one she’s the most comfortable with but, Clarke knows that Raven’s been a bit more observant of Clarke’s comings and goings ever since she found out that a certain pair of siblings resided in the same city as her two months ago.  
“Why should you be worried?” she asks, as she finishes one eyeliner wing and moves onto the other one. Raven’s sitting on the closed toilet of Clarke’s bathroom, having perched herself there ever since Clarke announced that she was going to take today off work to wander around town. She finishes her second wing, her hand a little wobbly from nerves but not so bad that it’s obviously uneven. In all her years on this earth, she’s never gotten particularly good at makeup.

Raven sighs. She hands Clarke her favorite lipstick, a soft pink color only a shade darker than her lips, because even though it’s been 30 years since they last lived together, Raven still remembers silly details like that. Clarke smiles in thanks before using it to darken her lips.

“Because, in the whole time I’ve known, you’ve never taken a day off work. Not even when real fucked up shit was happening.”

“You’re the one who says I should work less.”

“Yeah, but I didn’t expect you to listen to me.”

Even though she knows Raven’s concern for her comes from a good place, a kind one, the intensity of her friend’s stare and her words, spoken in a unnaturally soft tone of voice for someone like Raven, make Clarke painfully uncomfortable. She wishes, desperately, that Raven was the one with the problem, and Clarke the one with the solution. Hell, she wishes even more that there was a problem larger than both of themselves that they could focus on together. Anything to draw the attention away from herself and her emotions. She puts away her lipstick and turns to face Raven, whose worried expression makes Clarke want to evaporate entirely.

“Raven, I appreciate you looking out for me. But, I’m fine. Perfectly fine. I just decided to take a day off. Nothing to worry about,” she manages, trying to keep her tone even. It’s only when she’s speaking the words that Clarke realizes how false they truly are. She isn’t fine. And Raven isn’t stupid, she’s actually the farthest thing from it, and she’s always been the best at seeing through Clarke’s bullshit, better than Bellamy even.

They remain like that for a moment, staring each other down. It’s a stalemate and both of them refuse to budge.

“What’re you up to today?” Clarke finally says, breaking the stubborn silence that has filled the air between them. Raven shrugs before getting up to trade places with Clarke, so she can get ready for her day as well. She grabs her hair gel from the medicine cabinet, smoothing it over her baby hairs.

“Nothing too exciting. Gonna work on my app for a bit longer then go grab a drink with Monty. I know you being back in the States is supposed to be a big secret, but it would be nice for him to see you. He talks about how much he misses you all the time.”

Clarke smiles, warmed by the thought of their old friends. It had taken them centuries to find each other, unfortunate souls that had been cursed to eternal life, but once they had, it felt impossible to let go. Monty’s one of the younger ones, nowhere near as old as Clarke (in fact, the only people that Clarke’s met that are older than her are Bellamy and Octavia and even they don’t have more than 50 years on her, though neither of them had ever let her forget it).

“Maybe I’ll try to come by,” she manages but, the words ring false. She’s not ready for the others to know where she is, to reach out to her. The only person, other than Raven, who knows that Clarke’s back in DC is Wells, and that’s mostly because he’s off on another UN Peacekeeping Mission in Kosovo and wanted to know if she was back in Europe. Besides, she knows that once Monty knows, it will be no time at all before the news reaches Bellamy and the very thought makes her throat constrict with panic and her palms sweaty.

Raven sighs before tightening her ponytail. “God, you’re such a shitty liar, Clarke. I get it. You’re still doing your hermit thing. I just want you to know that eventually, when you get sick of hanging out with me, there’s a whole world of people who’d like to see you,” she says, before clapping Clarke roughly on the shoulder. With that, Raven departs Clarke’s bathroom, leaving her stunned and the most annoying combination of guilty and thankful for having a friend like Raven.

She doesn’t know what she did to deserve Raven. Because, even though Raven caught her in one lie today, she missed the other one. Clarke has a very specific reason for taking today off. And it’s to go find Bellamy Blake.

*

This isn’t a plan that she just came up with. It isn’t spur of the moment. No, it’s something that Clarke has been thinking about every day since she saw Octavia two months ago.

At first it was just a thought, nibbling at her whenever she let her guard down. She tried to fill her mind with work, with nonsense, with booze, anything to keep it from surfacing, but no matter how hard she tried, it would always come back, torturing her until it was all she could think about, all she could feel.

He’s here. Bellamy is here.

She wishes her memory didn’t cling so much to him and all the things they had done together. She doesn’t like how she can still sketch his face perfectly from memory, even though she hasn’t seen him in a hundred years. She wishes her body didn’t ache for his touch and his closeness. Most of all, she wishes she was strong enough to make a decision: to stay or to go.

Going is familiar territory. It’s what she’s done for the past two thousand years. She’s left everyone in her life at least once but she’s left him the most, often without a goodbye. There was a time where he didn’t seem to care, where he accepted her half-hearted apology with “whatever you say, Princess,” and then they would go back to normal (or whatever small portion of normal that they had allowed themselves).

But, staying. This would be the first time she has done it. It isn’t taking quite right, still feels awfully unnatural but, everyday, she tries to commit a little bit more to her life here, not because of his proximity, but because she’s tired. This life she’s made here, with Raven, their apartment, the coffee shop across from the hospital that serves orange-cranberry scones, it isn’t the most exotic land that she has resided in but she knows that she has to stop leaving eventually. Maybe this will be it, the time that sticks.

In an email exchange with Wells, he tells her that he’s proud of her for even making it a month. She hasn’t told him everything (because, would she be Clarke if she did?) but she’s certain that he knows who else is living in Washington D.C. other than her and Raven. He’s always been the best kind of friend, one who never pries, partly out of respect but also partly because he too is secretive, quiet. The last time she saw him and mentioned that she was planning on moving to DC, with Raven, he had gotten the oddest look on his face, one she had only seen a handful of times before, and asked after their mutual friend in the softest voice, almost as though he didn’t want to be heard. Clarke remembers that detail only sometimes, in instances when she’s speaking to Raven and she realizes, that though Raven’s always asking after Clarke, she’s never seemed to want her friend to return the favor, especially when it came to matters of the heart. For someone who seems so worried about a friend’s secrets, Raven’s certainly keeping a a handful of her own. And, why shouldn’t she? Secrets, Clarke has learned, are one of the few things that can keep you safe, protected, closed off, and unharmed.

Secrets are all she has now, secrets of who she used to be and all the different forms her life has taken. When she was mortal, Clarke thinks, she probably had no need for secrets, because everything then must have been so simple. She had just been a girl, perhaps a proud one, a rash one, but her life was only that was behind her and what stretched in front of her, a straight line. Now, after two thousand long years, her life has become a kaleidoscope, with seeming infinite variation and form, and whenever she tries to take a critical eye to it and really try to parse out who she is, what she is, and what she was once was, it makes her dizzy until she finally surrenders to the truth: that there is no sense to be made of the life she has had and without sense, it is meaningless.

And perhaps this moment is the most meaningless of all, this urge to see him again. For what, the logical part of her keeps asking herself. To torture herself further? To carry out some sort of penance? It is certainly not to speak to him, she knows she doesn’t deserve that much. The very thought of looking him in the eyes and saying “hello,” like nothing has changed and there isn’t a canyon of 100 years between them, makes her throat constrict, her heart beat impossibly fast. No, she will never speak to him as long as the earth continues spinning. She has promised herself that. She knows her heart couldn’t take it.

Clarke tries to distract herself from this anxiety by trying on shirt after shirt, trying to remember what she was wearing the last time he had seen her and trying to figure out what the exact opposite of those items would be, as if that would protect her from his recognition. Given the time period, she assumes that a dress must have been involved so she dons a button down shirt, loosely tucked into a pair of high-waisted jeans. She considers a jacket, given the fact that fall is just beginning and the air is beginning to bite, but decides against it. Perhaps the cold will keep her moving, keep her from dwelling, from staring for too long.

In some ways, it’s nice to get dressed up. She can’t remember the last time she cared what she looked like. She considers her shoes (she’s gathered so many of them over the years) and chooses the most modern, a black canvas sneaker that hasn’t seen much wear yet. Once she slips them on, she takes a deep breath.

“Here goes nothing.”

*

  
Once she steps outside, her feet move without thought, taking her to the address she had found a couple weeks ago in a moment of weakness. Thanks to the internet, it had taken her no time at all to learn about this Bellamy and what kind of life he has now. Unsurprisingly, he is a college professor, specializing in Ancient Roman History, teaching at Georgetown University in the Classics department. He’s an assistant professor, not yet tenured, but she can tell from the effusive praise that students direct his way on ratemyprofessor.com (along with a lot of chili peppers, which Clarke realized, with a blush, is used to rate a professor’s “hotness”) that he is on his way to becoming associate. She’s not surprised; of all the different mantles Bellamy has taken up in his time on earth, professor is one of the ones he’s best at.

Georgetown isn’t too far from where she and Raven live. She takes the Metro most of the way, her leg jiggling the entire ride.

Only when she emerges from the underground Metro station does she fully process what a terrible fucking idea it is. She feels it again: the urge to turn around and run. Her nails (or what’s left of them after she’s spent the better part of the past two months chewing them down to the nub) dig into her palms as she realizes that she really doesn’t have a fucking plan or even an inkling of a purpose.

All she has is the ache in her chest where Bellamy used to be.

It’s an ache that she’s gotten used to over the years, since the last time they saw each other over 100 years ago. Even before then, she had become accustomed to the way her body yearned for him, not in a carnal way but a spiritual one. And perhaps this is what this is, an effort to ease the ache without the hurt of speaking to him again and learning what he’s really thought of her over the past 100 years.

Steeling herself, she begins to walk. It’s a beautiful day and, even though she has a feeling this is all going to end in some sort of disaster, Clarke’s happy to be taking today off. She has been working too much. Even her fellow attendings have begun to comment on it. Jackson, a young man that she has grown particularly fond of since he seems to be just as much of a workaholic as she is, has taken to calling her the ghost of the emergency wing because, even when Clarke should be gone, she’s always there, haunting the floor and looking half-dead from lack of sleep. She had been surprised by how hard she had laughed at his joke, how it had tickled her. He had looked surprised too, probably because Clarke typically came across as an emotionless robot at work (or at least, she did there more than she tended to in her everyday life). That had been the beginning of a small friendship between them, one that has brought her small spots of light in her otherwise gloomy perception of her own existence.

She used to not let herself have those moments. She used to tell herself she didn’t deserve them. And deep down, Clarke still feels that way. But, after 2000 years on this earth, she’s getting a little sick of feeling like a shadow, temporal, ready to disappear at the slightest sign of trouble. She wants something about her to feel real.

Even if it’s the smallest thing. Perhaps it’s just the little jokes she and Jackson tell each other between shifts.

The thought of their burgeoning friendship warms her just as much as the sun. While her pace to Georgetown doesn’t necessarily quicken, she is walking with more confidence. She’ll just look at him. That’s all she needs, she becomes more sure of with every step she takes. Just a glance, enough to let her know that she can live in this world, one where Bellamy exists but is apart from her. One where she can relearn how to feel, how to engage, without him. It feels good, thinking that this type of world exists, one where she may one day not feel like a ghost, haunting the periphery of mortal life.

Georgetown is beautiful in the way old universities are beautiful. She enters the campus and takes a deep breathe. Crowds of students swarm past her, caught up in their own lives. Clarke cannot help but smile, as she remembers what it was like to be a student, to feel the infinite promise of your future. She has to walk carefully now, dodging tight-knit groups. One group, five girls who look to be 18, almost push her off the path as they rush past her but she can’t even be angry at them, too caught up in the promise of today.

It’s a giant campus and she takes her time, making her way in. The students start to thin out, beginning to make their way to class and it’s easier to pause and take in her surroundings. She finds herself drawn to every date plaque that catches her eye. It’s a habit of hers, one that Raven has always found annoying, but, since she’s alone, she’s able to indulge and do the mental mathematics to see where she was in time when different buildings were built and different trees were planted.

She walks like that for a while, letting herself get caught up in her reverie. The foliage soon gives way to buildings and, suddenly, she realizes she’s in the middle of campus with, thankfully, no sign of Bellamy. She lets out a sigh of relief. While she knew seeing him was a possibility, it isn’t one that she feels particularly prepared for. She lets her guard down, leans against a nearby wall, and pulls out her phone. She’s greeted by a series of texts from Raven, complaining that drinks with Monty has turned into far more than that, as it always does. Grinning, she scrolls through Raven’s messages which begin with begrudging annoyance and eventually ratchet up to murderous rage, directed at everyone from Monty, to Clarke, to Murphy (who showed up, for some reason), and to every human who dares to ask Raven what happened to her leg.

After shooting off a reply that is a half-hearted attempt at mollifying her friend’s rage, Clarke feels the hair on the back of her neck prickle. At first, she ignores the feeling, content to scroll through her phone and eavesdrop on college kid’s conversations.

That is, until a very familiar voice drifts through the cacophony of a college campus.

That voice, that fucking voice. She can recognize it anywhere, its exact timbre and gravel and grit. She’s heard it wrapped around so many different languages, so many different types of words. She knows how it breaks with the weight of sadness and soars with the levity of joy. She remembers how taken aback she was by it, when they first met, all those centuries ago in Macedonia, and how it has driven her crazy for years afterward, the way he had sounded so smooth when he was talking so rough. For a moment, she feels a dizzy happiness come over her, without any thought or analysis and she wants to cry out for him, to say that she’s back and she’s here for him.

But, quickly, that feeling is replaced by the slick cold of dread as he begins to come into her eye line. Bellamy’s walking, with another professor (a woman with sharp eyes and a lovely mouth), leather laptop bag slung over his shoulder and a pair of horn rimmed glasses perched on his nose. His hair is tousled, like it always has been, falling over his eyes, and her heart clenches as she realizes that he never really changes, not really, that deep down, he’s always the same Bellamy and that thought, that primal knowledge, causes her throat to constrict with panic. He’s in a crisp button down, a soft green that plays beautifully off his skin, and a pair of black slacks. A tweed coat is thrown clumsily over his shoulders and she notices that the tag is poking out of the back. To her horror, the woman next to him places a hand on his shoulder to slow his walking and reaches to tuck it back beneath his jacket. He smiles in thanks and it’s that small expression that breaks her, seeing what his smile looks like and she becomes painfully aware of how fast her heart is beating and how she’s rooted to where she’s standing out of panic. He’s coming closer, probably walking to the line of classrooms alongside Clarke, and she needs to move, needs to escape, but she’s paralyzed because she never thought it would be this bad, seeing him again. Painful, yes, but she didn’t know it would feel like all of her bones breaking and being reset, her body struggling to sort out sharp pain from dull agony.

Thankfully, her survival instinct kicks in and before he gets too close and him seeing her becomes an absolute certainty, she gains the ability to move her feet again and she moves quickly, throwing the nearest door open. It’s a classroom, one of those large lecture style rooms that can fit at least a hundred students. Her head’s swimming, she can’t think clearly, and all she can muster the strength to do is plop herself down in one of the seats in the very back, behind a student who’s thankfully much taller than her slight 5’4.”

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” Clarke mutters to herself, struggling to regain her composure. She tries to rationalize, tries to calm herself down as she wipes cold sweat away from her forehead. This is a shitty situation but she’s a master at shitty situations and finding ways to get out of them. Or at least, that’s what she keeps telling herself. Slowly, as the students begin to fill in the seats around her and it becomes easier to catch her breathe.

Slowly, the beginnings of a plan appear in her mind. Everything is fine, she tells herself over and over again. He didn’t see her. Sitting in this classroom is a bit of a detour, yes, but college lectures are usually no more than an hour and a half and she can just sit here, regaining her composure. This is a big enough class that no one will notice one red-faced, frizzy haired woman trying to catch her breath in the back of the room. Besides, due to the fact that she hasn’t aged in over 2000 years, she can totally pass for a college student, though a more bedraggled and sleep deprived one.

After what feels like eternity, her breathing returns to normal. People sit next to her and do not even give her a second glance. She takes out a notebook that she carries around with her but never seems to use, a pen from the bottom of her bag, and prepares herself for pretending to be a diligent college student. And for a moment, the world doesn’t feel that overwhelming anymore. Yes, this may have been a bad idea but she’s had worse and has survived those too. Her pulse settles and she begins to doodle on the blank page in front of her. Hell, listening to a lecture might even be fun.

She hears the door close and a hush falls over the chattering students, signifying the entrance of the professor at last.

“Hello, everyone. I hope you all had a great spring break and are ready to get back to learning. In case you forgot over break, I’m Professor Blake and you’re in Intro to Mythology.”

And with that, Clarke’s world shatters.


End file.
